Jeffrey Ford - Pansolapia The woman of the palace, Vashmena, moves with the grace of the hornbills hunting in a sunset lake. Her black gown, like melting night, is studded with chips of quartz that catch the light of the torches and recreate the heavens. She is deep in meditation — now pacing, now swaying slightly, now standing still. When at rest, it is impossible to tell if she is breathing. The only signs that she is more than a statue are the twitch of a nostril and a quivering at the ends of her silken black hair. Then, like an illusion, she moves — slow as thick mist rolling — wide, arcing arm strokes and high, backward steps. She falls through space where speed has lost all meaning, and holds her long middle fingers curled to her palms. When she lands, back into perfect stillness, it is as if she has never moved at all. Behind her green eyes roars an iron-colored ocean. The waves are mountains and the troughs, quick trips to hell. The sky is the color of dirt and the wind has a voice. "Sleep," it howls at the men lashed to the rigging of a lone, double-masted ship. Nothing could be more frightening to them than its exquisite elocution, for its command is the voice of the woman they saw dance in the courtyard at Pansolapia. It follows them down beneath the waves, swamping their thoughts as the brine bursts their lungs. Their long hair rises up in wavy points toward the distant storm as the ship drifts into darkness. All hands grin. All hands stare at the woman in black, now moving like an eel, now posing like a rock upon a rock. The stars shiver down her stomach as her hips swing with fluid speed, and the lion-pawed guard at the gates of the palace knows to let the sailors pass. He growls a command to proceed, which the long-haired foreigners take to be a challenge. They draw curved, serrated knives and wait for a fight. The old beast-man, Kilif, laughs at their weapons and steps aside. "Gusmashnease," he says, his only word, which means nothing, and the broadest of the men sheathes his blade and smiles. "Pansolapia?" asks the traveler, scanning the crumbling turrets of the impossible structure. Vashmena breathes out slowly through her nose as she watches, at an incredible distance, Kilif nod and brush away a tear. Her voice vibrates, filling the courtyard and frightening the vultures into flight. One word, one syllable, gets beneath the bricks and loosens them. Imperceptibly, her ears prick up in response to the echo just as they do when the sailor calls to her down the long hall of columns leading to the carnivorous gardens. Her memory of running is played out in her pulse. A hundred yards away, she feels his breath at the back of her neck. His pursuit is the gentle tapping of her left foot. She crouches and then as quickly stands and begins to spin as the bearded foreigner suddenly wakes before dawn on the day he is to begin his journey to Pansolapia. Ardnith is his name, and he looks at his sleeping wife, wondering if he will return. They hear a sound, like a sigh, as they pace quietly, so not to draw ghosts, through the corridors of the deserted palace. How could they know it is the sweep and swirl of her dress as she comes to rest in the courtyard of Pansolapia? The place is nothing like what they had wondered when the Shaman commanded them to go in search of the future. Ardnith's wife had wept at the order, for her recent nightmare had shown her their demise. "What is it?" asked Ardnith as he held her. "Gusmashnease," says the loyal Kilif sometime eight years hence, and the widow soon-to-be says less. Ardnith draws his blade as the first hungry blossom descends to devour him. Her nipples harden as she recalls his touch, creating a new constellation across her chest. The sailors look up one night on their return journey and realize they are lost. "This is not our ocean," they cry after studying the stars. Young Freg holds tightly to the lock of hair he has stolen from the murdered Kilif, as if a lion's courage would now breathe through him. Ardnith knows immediately that they have been cursed by Vashmena. In the courtyard, she again breathes out, this time through her mouth, and the winds begin to trouble the ocean. As the ship founders, he remembers taking her from behind in a mirrored chamber, and all he remembers is the illusion of her. She hides and watches as he couples with her image, but when he loses his seed it seeps into her reflection and then into her through her eyes. So now, as she dances, her stomach swells with the deception of the foreigner. She dances as she had for the company before they retreated through the phantom palace toward the harbor. As Ardnith sprints for his ship, the snail-streaked walls and frayed tapestries disintegrate, bleeding atoms. Vashmena falls suddenly back on the stones of the courtyard and opens her legs. She breathes now, only through her mouth, rapid, determined breaths. Her cries wake Ardnith's wife as he is preparing to leave. "Please, don't go," she whispers to him. "The Shaman is a fool," she says. "There is nothing beyond the rim of the world." He tells her he must go and heads for the door. He turns back to look at her as his lungs give their last breath to the rising ocean. Vashmena is dancing, she is giving birth. The Shaman is in his cave, chanting a lion-man to life from a scrap of hide, a tooth, a claw. As the seaweed wraps around Ardnith's neck, his life plays itself out before his eyes. He sees his childhood, his father's battle scars, caribou moving through the early morning frost, icebergs colliding offshore, his wife's long blonde braid like a maze, his decision not to go. In that instant, Pansolapia is born, and Kilif shouts, "Gusmashnease," loud enough to wake the sleeping sailor. Ardnith rubs his eyes and opens them to see the Shaman, cradling the dream child in his arms. The sly old man spins like a woman dancing and steps away into the night. Then Ardnith hears the masts splinter and crack. The blossom consumes him with a maw of thorns, in a mirrored room, at the bottom of the ocean, next to his sleeping wife.